Method for detecting link spam in hyperlinked databases

ABSTRACT

Methods for facilitating the identification of link spamming in a linked database include calculating a spam likelihood value for nodes in a directed graph of linked nodes are disclosed. The spam likelihood value is computed from an importance of the node and a derivative value of the importance function with respect to a coupling factor. The likelihood that the node&#39;s importance is inflated by link spam is estimated by calculating the ratio of the magnitude of the derivative value for the node to the rank for the node. Alternatively, the spam likelihood may be computed directly from a component of the principal eigenvector of A evaluated at two values of the parameter c. The normalized derivative value can also be used to provide an order of importance in a list of nodes.

RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No.10/921,381, filed Aug. 18, 2004, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,509,344, whichclaims prior to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/496,125,filed Aug. 18, 2003, which are incorporated by reference herein in theirentirety.

TECHNICAL FIELD

This invention relates generally to improved techniques for analyzinglarge linked databases having the structure of directed graphs. Morespecifically, it relates to methods for facilitating the identificationof nodes in such graphs whose surrounding link structure may have beenmanipulated to artificially inflate the rank of the node as determinedby a link-based node ranking scheme.

BACKGROUND

A search engine is a software program designed to help a user accessfiles stored on a computer, for example on the World Wide Web (WWW), byallowing the user to ask for documents meeting certain criteria (e.g.,those containing a given word, a set of words, or a phrase) andretrieving files that match those criteria. Web search engines work bystoring information about a large number of web pages (hereinafter alsoreferred to as “pages” or “documents”), which they retrieve from theWWW. These documents are retrieved by a web crawler or spider, which isan automated web browser which follows every link it encounters in acrawled document. The contents of each document are indexed, therebyadding data concerning the words or terms in the document to an indexdatabase for use in responding to queries. Some search engines, alsostore all or part of the document itself, in addition to the indexentries. When a user makes a search query having one or more terms, thesearch engine searches the index for documents that satisfy the query,and provides a listing of matching documents, typically including foreach listed document the URL, the title of the document, and in somesearch engines a portion of document's text deemed relevant to thequery. In many instances the list of matching documents is ordered by aranking, or importance value of the document determined, in part, on howthe documents link to each other.

More generally, a linked database is a database of documents containingmutual citations. Examples of linked databases include the world wideweb or other hypermedia archive, the database of US patents, and adatabase of academic journal articles. A linked database can berepresented as a directed graph of N nodes, where each node correspondsto a document in the database and where the directed connections betweennodes correspond to the links, citations, or references from onedocument to another.

It can be useful for various purposes to rank or assign importancevalues to nodes in a large linked database. For example, the relevanceof database search results can be improved by sorting the retrievednodes according to their ranks, and presenting the most important,highly ranked nodes first. One approach to ranking documents involvesexamining the intrinsic content of each document or the backlink anchortext in parents of each document. This approach can be computationallyintensive and often fails to assign highest ranks to the most importantdocuments. Another approach to ranking involves examining the extrinsicrelationships between documents, i.e., from the link structure of thedirected graph. This type of approach is called a link-based ranking.For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,285,999 to Page discloses a technique usedby the Google search engine for assigning a rank to each document in ahypertext database. According to the link-based ranking method of Page,the rank of a node is recursively defined as a function of the ranks ofits parent nodes. Looked at another way, the rank of a node is thesteady-state probability that an arbitrarily long random walk throughthe network will end up at the given node. Thus, a node will tend tohave a high rank if it has many parents, or if its parents have highrank.

A problem with known link-based ranking methods is that the linkstructure surrounding a node can be deliberately modified toartificially inflate the rank of the node. Consequently, the rankingresults of current link-based ranking methods are susceptible toindirect manipulation and distortion. It would be desirable to identifyand eliminate or reduce the effects of certain techniques toartificially inflate the ranks of nodes.

SUMMARY

According to one embodiment, a method for identifying nodes that arebeneficiaries of node importance inflating links in a directed graph oflinked nodes includes computing, for each of at least a subset of thenodes in the directed graph, a respective quantity corresponding to aderivative of a node importance function. For each node in the subsetits respective computed quantity is compared with a threshold. At leasta portion of the subset for which the comparison produces a predefinedresult is identified.

According to another embodiment of the invention, a method for orderingnodes in a directed graph of linked nodes includes computing, for eachof at least a portion of the nodes in the direct graph, a respectivequantity for the respective node corresponding to a derivative of a nodeimportance function. A subset of the portion is ordered in accordancewith the respective quantities.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The aforementioned features and advantages of the invention as well asadditional features and advantages thereof will be more clearlyunderstood hereinafter as a result of a detailed description ofembodiments of the invention when taken in conjunction with thedrawings. Like reference numerals refer to corresponding partsthroughout the several views of the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a search engine having a back end systemand a front end systems in accordance with an embodiment of the presentinvention.

FIG. 2 illustrates a linked node graph in accordance with an embodimentof the present invention.

FIG. 3 illustrates a link farm in accordance with an embodiment of thepresent invention.

FIG. 4 illustrates a web ring in accordance with an embodiment of thepresent invention.

FIG. 5 illustrates a way to identify potential nodes whose importancehas been artificially inflated in accordance with an embodiment of thepresent invention.

FIG. 6 illustrates in more detail how to calculate the derivative of theimportance function in accordance with an embodiment of the presentinvention.

FIG. 7 illustrates calculating multiple derivatives of the importancefunction in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 8 illustrates a inflation detector in accordance with an embodimentof the present invention.

DESCRIPTION OF EMBODIMENTS

The techniques of the present invention may used in a search engineenvironment where the linked database is generated from crawling anumber of documents, such as the Internet. FIG. 1 is a block diagram ofone such typical search engine environment. As illustrated in FIG. 1, asearch engine 100 has a back end system 102 and a front end system 104.The layout of the search engine system 100 is merely exemplary and cantake on any other suitable layout or configuration.

The back end system 102 generally includes one or more crawlers 104(also known as spiders), one or more document indexers 106 and adocument index 108. To index the large number of Web pages that exist onthe worldwide web, the web crawler 104 locates and downloads web pagesand other information (hereinafter also referred to as “documents”). Insome embodiments, a set of content filters 110 identify and filter outduplicate documents, and determine which documents should be sent to thedocument indexers 106 for indexing. The document indexers 106 processthe downloaded documents, creating a document index 108 of terms foundin those documents. If a document changes, then the document index 108is updated with new information. Until a document is indexed, it isgenerally not available to users of the search engine 100.

The front end system 104 generally includes a web server 112, acontroller 114, a cache 118, a second level controller 120 and one ormore document index servers 122 a, . . . , 122 n. The document index 108is created by the search engine 100 and is used to identify documentsthat contain one or more terms in a search query. To search fordocuments on a particular subject, a user enters or otherwise specifiesa search query, which includes one or more terms and operators (e.g.,Boolean operators, positional operators, parentheses, etc.), and submitsthe search query to the search engine 100 using the web server 112.

The controller 114 is coupled to the web server 112 and the cache 118.The cache 118 is used to speed up searches by temporarily storingpreviously located search results. In some embodiments, the cache 118includes both high speed memory and disk storage for storing cachesearch results. In some embodiments, the cache 118 is distributed overmultiple cache servers. Furthermore, in some embodiments, the data(search results) in the cache 118 is replicated in a parallel set ofcache servers. Providing more than one copy of the cache data providesboth fault tolerance and improved throughput for quickly retrievingsearch results generated during a previous search in response to thesearch query.

The controller 114 is coupled to a second level controller 120 whichcommunicates with one or more document index servers 122 a, . . . , 122n. the document index servers 122 a, . . . , 122 n encode the query intoan expression that is used to search the document index 108 to identifydocuments that contain the terms specified by the search query. In someembodiments, the document index servers 122 search respective partitionsof the document index 108 generated by the back end system 102 andreturn their results to the second level controller 120. The secondlevel controller 120 combines the search results received from thedocument index servers 122 a, . . . , 122 n, removes duplicate results(if any), and forwards those results to the controller 114. In someembodiments, there are multiple second level controllers 120 thatoperate in parallel to search different partitions of document index108, each second level controller 120 having a respective set ofdocument index servers 122 to search respective sub-partitions ofdocument index 108. In such embodiments, the controller 114 distributesthe search query to the multiple second level controllers 120 andcombines search results received from the second level controllers 120.The controller 114 also stores the query and search results in the cache118, and passes the search results to the web server 112. A list ofdocuments that satisfy the query is presented to the user via the webserver 112.

In some embodiments, the content filters 110, or an associated set ofservers or processes, identify all the links in every web page producedby the crawlers 104 and store information about those links in a set oflink records 124. The link records 124 indicate both the source URL andthe target URL of each link, and may optionally contain otherinformation as well, such as the “anchor text” associated with the link.A URL Resolver 126 reads the link records 124 and generates a database128 of links, also called link maps, which include pairs of URLs orother web page document identifiers. In some embodiments, the linksdatabase 128 is used by a set of one or more Page Rankers 130 to computePageRanks 132 for all the documents downloaded by the crawlers. ThesePageRanks 132 are then used by Controller 114 to rank the documentsreturned from a query of document index 108 by document index servers122. In certain embodiments of the present invention, the back endsystem 102 further comprises quantizers 134 that are used to quantizedata in PageRanks 132. Brin and Page, “The Anatomy of a Large-ScaleHypertextual Search Engine,” 7th International World Wide WebConference, Brisbane, Australia, which is hereby incorporated byreference in its entirety, provides more details on how a PageRankmetric can be computed.

In some embodiments an inflation detector 136 examines the link maps 128to examine whether any nodes might be subject to artificial linkinflation. In some embodiments, the inflation detector 136 uses thePageRanks 132 in making such a determination. In some embodiments, theinflation detector 136 may alter the PageRanks 132 or the link maps 128as a result of detecting inflated nodes.

Although the following exemplary discussion uses a set of linkeddocuments generated from a search engine crawl, the linked nodes couldbe generated from a variety of sources. For example, the directed graphlinked nodes could be generated from linked electronic hypertextdocuments, journal articles citing each other, patents citing otherpatents, newsgroup postings, email messages, and social networks such asFriendster, peer-to-peer networks, etc. Furthermore, the term documentas used herein could represent any number of items such as audio filesand media files, for example. One of ordinary skill in the part wouldrecognize various other types of information which could produce adirected graph of linked nodes as well as other types of documents.

A typical linked database can be represented as a directed graph of Nnodes 200, as illustrated in FIG. 2, where each node corresponds to adocument in the database and where the directed connections betweennodes correspond to the links, citations, or references from onedocument to another. For example, in FIG. 2 directed connection 202 is alink from node 204 to node 206. A given node has a (possibly empty) setof forward links that connect it to children nodes, and a (possiblyempty) set of backward links that connect it to parent nodes. Forexample, link 202 is a backward link of node 206 and a forward link ofnode 204. Thus, node 206 is a child of node 204, and node 204 is aparent of node 206.

Deliberate manipulation of the link structure in the linked database inattempt to inflate the rank of a node or set of nodes is generallycalled link spamming. For example, current link-based ranking methodsare susceptible to at least two types of link spam: “link farms” and“clique attacks”. A link farm may be defined to be a set of nodes wherea large number of nodes point to a single node in order to give thefalse impression that the single node is important. For example, FIG. 3illustrates a link farm 300 in which the rank assigned to a home page302 of a commercial web site, for example, is artificially increased bycreating many dummy web documents 304 that all have links 306 to thehome page 302. If the link farm is successful at inflating the rank ofhome page 302, the commercial web site will appear artificially closerto the top of search results that are presented with higher rankingsites first. Another type of link spam is the clique attack, or webring, which is defined to be a set of nodes that point predominantly toone another to give the false appearance of authority or importance. Forexample, FIG. 4 illustrates a web ring 400 of four nodes that haveconspired to create many mutual links to each other in a deliberateattempt to inflate their ranks. Node 402 has a link 404 to node 406,which in turn has a link 408 back to node 400. As illustrated in thefigure, there are similar mutual links between the other nodes in thering. If the web ring is successful at inflating the ranks of the pages,they will appear artificially closer to the top of search results thatare presented with higher ranking sites first.

Because link inflation degrades the accuracy of rankings produced bylink-based ranking methods, it would be desirable to be able to identifylink spam. However, detecting nodes that are participating in link farmsor clique attacks is generally a difficult problem in the case of largedatabases where human inspection of the directed graph is virtuallyimpossible. One reason for the difficulty is that, for example, atypical directed graph for a database will naturally have somestructures similar to the structure of a link farm. A naïve approach todetecting link farms would involve checking each node in the entiregraph to determine whether it is pointed to by a large number of pages.This approach would fail to distinguish a link farm from an authenticstructure involving many nodes linking to a single very important node.In addition, searching the entire graph for such structures iscomputationally prohibitive for very large databases such as the web.

The above problems associated with some link-based ranking methods maybe reduced by analyzing the directed graph associated with the linkeddatabase. In particular, though link farms and web rings exist intypical linked databases, a distinction between normally occurring andintentionally inflating structures may be identified according toembodiments of the invention.

To illustrate an example of the possible distinctions, consider againthe link farm illustrated in FIG. 3. This structure is characterized bythe presence of one central node with many other nodes linking to it.This same structure, however, naturally occurs in linked databaseswhenever a very important node is linked to by many other nodes. Forexample, the web site Yahoo.com has many links pointing to it, but it isnot a link farm. In the case of natural structures, the nodes linking tothe central node tend to have some links with relatively high rank,while in the case of link farms, the nodes linking to the central nodeall tend to have relatively low rank.

A brute-force search of the network for such structures would becomputationally prohibitive, so another would be preferred. Therefore,according to embodiments of the invention, a quantity, a derivativevalue, is associated with each node. This value can be used to quantifythe distinction between link spam and naturally occurring structuressimilar to link spam.

In one embodiment, and with reference to FIG. 5, a database ofhyperlinked documents is initially created, for example using the linkrecords of FIG. 1 (502). From the database of hyperlinked documents, adirected graph is created (504) which represents the links between thevarious documents. In one embodiment, this may be represented as aprobability transition matrix where the value of A(j,i) represents theprobability that a random surfer will jump from node i to node j. A nodeimportance function is identified which is used to compute theimportance of the nodes which takes into account the links of thevarious documents (506). In one embodiment, the node importance functionis the PageRank function described earlier. In other embodiments, otherlink-based ranking techniques could also be used. In still otherembodiment, non-link based ranking functions can be used. A derivativeof this function is then identified with respect to a link couplingfactor (508). In one embodiment the link coupling factor ranges,inclusively, from 0 to 1. A lower value of the coupling factor indicatesthat the links are less coupled according to the directed graph and ahigher value indicated that the links are more coupled to the directedgraph. For example, when the coupling factor is 0 the nodes arecompletely decoupled. In this instance, there is complete random jumpingfrom node to node, and all nodes are assigned an equal rank (i.e., allnodes are equally likely to be visited). At the other extreme, when thecoupling factor is 1, the nodes are completely coupled. In thisinstance, there is no decoupling caused by jumping to random nodes, andthe nodes will have different ranks. In link-based ranking systems, therank for a node is dependent on the ranks of all the nodes linking toit. Thus, as the coupling factor varies, the change of the rank of anode will change depending on the ranks of the nodes pointing to it.

For a selected value of the coupling factor the value of the derivativeis computed (510). In a link farm, all the nodes pointing to the centralnode will tend to have very low importance, so the change in importance(i.e., the derivative of the importance function) of the central node(e.g., node 302 or FIG. 3) will be negative. Moreover, since there tendto be many of these low-importance nodes, the change will tend to besharply negative. For an authentically important node, however, therewill be some high-ranked nodes pointing to it in addition to manylow-ranked nodes. These effects will tend to cancel each other, and thechange in importance will therefore not be so dramatic. In someembodiments the change in importance of a node is normalized by theimportance of the node (512), and then an examination of the normalizedderivative values is made against a predefined result (514). Nodes whoseimportance is inflated due to a link farm-type structure tend to producea normalized derivative of the importance with respect to the couplingfactor that is typically quite large and negative in comparison with thesame quantity for other nodes in the graph, including similar naturallyoccurring structures. An analogous analysis of web rings shows that thenormalized derivative of the importance with respect to the couplingfactor is typically quite large and positive in comparison with the samequantity for other nodes in the graph. In a clique attack, the nodespredominantly link to each other and not to other nodes. As the couplingincreases, the importance of nodes in the ring will increase quickly,since the importance values propagated through the ring in determining asteady-sate importance are not dissipated to nodes outside the ring. Anaturally occurring structure, in contrast, will tend to have more linksto nodes outside the ring, thereby dissipating the importance of mutualreinforcement of the links. Thus, the normalized derivative of the webring will be quite large and positive in comparison with other nodes inthe graph.

The importance factor used for normalization, however, is notnecessarily the same importance of the node for which the derivative istaken. For example, the normalization importance factor could becalculated by counting in-links to each node, calculating a principaleigenvector of a link database matrix A, or calculating a singular valuedecomposition of a link database matrix A, where A is a N×N matrix andelement A(j,i) represents a transition probability from node i and nodej.

Once the normalized derivative value has been determined, there arevarious ways to use it based on predefined results to indicate whetherthe nodes are likely spam links for nodes in a directed graph (514).Once nodes likely to be spam link have been found, various actions canbe taken to account for the artificially inflated importance (516). Insome embodiment, candidate spam nodes of the link farm variety areidentified by selecting a predetermined percentage of nodes that havethe lowest normalized derivative values. In other embodiments, candidatespam nodes of the link farm variety are identified by selecting nodeswhose normalized derivative value is less than a threshold. Analogously,in other embodiments, candidate spam nodes of the web ring variety areidentified by selecting a predetermined percentage of nodes that havethe highest normalized derivative values. And, in other embodiments,candidate spam nodes of the web ring variety are identified by selectingnodes whose normalized derivative value is greater than a threshold. Inother embodiments, to identify spam nodes of both varietiessimultaneously, nodes are identified by selecting a predeterminedpercentage of nodes that have the largest magnitudes of the normalizedderivative value (i.e., |normalized derivative value|). In still otherembodiments, nodes are identified by selecting nodes that have themagnitudes of the normalized derivative value greater than a threshold(i.e., nodes where |normalized derivative value|>threshold). In someembodiments, a human or supplementary algorithm may be used to examinethe possible link spam nodes to make a final determination of whether ornot they are link spam. If a node is determined to be link spam or acandidate link spam, various counter-measures can be taken (516). Insome embodiments, the node is eliminated from the graph. In otherembodiments, the node make have it importance reduced. In someembodiments, the reduction is a predetermined penalty or a calculatedamount, e.g., an amount proportional to the magnitude of the normalizedderivative value. In some embodiments, the importance adjustment isapplied against a ranking or importance determine by techniques otherthan a link-based ranking scheme. In other embodiments, the importanceadjustment is applied against a ranking or importance determine bytechniques in combination with a link-based ranking scheme.

A more detailed discussion of some embodiments of the calculations usedin determining the candidate link spam is provided with reference toFIG. 6. From the directed graph of the hyperlinked nodes, a matrix A(c)is created representing elements in the database that are linked, whereA(c)=[cP+(1−c)E]^(T) (602). The N×N matrix A represents the transitionprobability structure of the directed graph. The value of the elementA(j,i) represents a weight for the link from node i to node j. Forexample, A(j,i) can be set equal to the fraction of links from node ithat connect to node j. More generally, if F is the fraction justmentioned, then A(i,j) can be set equal to cF+(1−c)/N, where c rangesinclusively from 0 to 1 and represents a link coupling probability and Nis the number of nodes in the graph. In some embodiments, A(i,j) caninvolve other terms to account for other link effects as well. P is anN×N row-stochastic matrix, where the element A(i,j) represents theprobability that a user will jump from i to node j, when a link from ito j exists, otherwise A(i,j) is zero. E is a matrix whose elementsA(i,j) represent the probability that a user will randomly jump fromnode i to j. In some embodiments, all entries in E are equal. In otherembodiments, the values of E may take into account a particular user'spreferences toward certain documents. For example, if a user frequentlyjumps to http://www.google.com unrelated to the user's current web page,then the elements could reflect a higher probability that the user willrandomly jump from any node to the node representing the www.google.comweb page. As c tends toward to 1, the contribution of the randomtransitions provides less value to A(i,j). Conversely, as the couplingfactors tends to zero, the random jump contribution to the transitionwill increase.

In some embodiments, the importance function is determined bycalculating the eigenvector, x(c), and eigenvalue, c, of A(c) (604). Thederivative, x′(c), of function x(c) represents the rate of change in theimportance value as a function of the coupling factor c. This may becalculated as x′(c)=(1−cP^(T))⁻¹(P−E)^(T)x(c) (606). Various derivativevalues may be determined by substituting for various values of thecoupling factor c (608).

In one embodiment to solve for x′(c), b=(P−E)^(T)x(c) and M=I−cP^(T).The solution of Mx′(c)=b for x′(c) would also provide the derivative ofthe importance function. There are many known algorithms for solvinglinear systems of equations, but many of them are not practical forsolving this system, since the matrix M tends to be very large andsparse, making a factorization (such as LU or QR) prohibitivelyexpensive. In one embodiment, solving this system uses a Jacobirelaxation technique. Jacobi relaxation is a simple iterative splittingalgorithm that proceeds as follows: Let M=D−L−U, where D is a diagonalmatrix, L is a lower triangular matrix with zeros on the diagonal, and Uis an upper triangular matrix with zeros on the diagonal. A singleiteration of the Jacobi method for solving the system of equations My=bproceeds as follows: D_(y) ^((k+1))=(L+U)_(y) ^((k))+b. As mentionedabove, M is provided as I−cP^(T), where the diagonal entries of P^(T)are all 0. Therefore, D=I and L+U=cP^(T). The Jacobi algorithm for thisproblem would therefore proceed as follows:

function x’(c)^((n)) =ComputeDerivativeValue( ) { x’(c)⁽⁰⁾ =e; b =P^(T)x(c) − E^(T)x(c); k = 1; repeat x’(c)^((k))= cPx^((k−1}) + b; δ= ∥b−Mx’(c)^((k))∥; k = k + 1; until δ < ε;where e is an N×1 matrix having elements equal to 1, and ε is a desiredtolerance value used to end the iteration.

The Jacobi algorithm will converge if the first eigenvalue of the matrixD⁻¹(L+U) is less than 1, and the convergence rate of Jacobi relaxationis given by the first eigenvalue:

$r = {\frac{{y^{({k + 1})} - y}}{{y^{(k)} - y}} = {\lambda\left( {D^{- 1}\left( {L + U} \right)} \right)}}$

Since D=I and L+U=cP^(T) as provided above, the convergence rate forthis algorithm for D-Values is r=c, which tends to be very fast for thevalues of c anywhere between (0≦c≦0.98). In other embodiments,convergence may also be achieved using Gauss-Seidel techniques to solveMx′(c)=b for x′(c).

Referring to FIG. 7, in some embodiments, multiple derivative values arecomputed for each node using multiple corresponding values for the linkcoupling parameter c. Since the derivative function may not be uniformover all values, in some embodiments using more than one value of c mayproduce a better approximate of the change in the importance due to thecoupling factor over a wider range, In some embodiments, a finalderivative value is computed from a combination of the multiplederivative values using the respective values of c (702). For example,the derivative values for several values of c may be averaged to obtainthe final derivative value. In the special case where the derivativevalue is normalized by the same rank, x(c), of which the derivativevalue, x′(c), is the derivative, the average of the normalized D-value,x′(c)/x(c), over an interval [a,b] is equal to log [x(b)/x(a)]/(b−a), orequivalently, [log x(b)−log x(a)]/(b−a).

In another embodiment of the invention, the magnitude of the derivativevalue of a node may be used independently as an estimate of theimportance of a node. Thus, irrespective of link spam considerations,the derivative value may be used to assign a rank to a node, and therank may be used in the same manner as other ranks known in the art,e.g., to sort the results of database searches.

Referring to FIG. 8, an embodiment of a computer 800 that implements themethods described above includes one or more processing units (CPU's)802, one or more network or other communications interfaces 804, memory806, and one or more communication buses 808 for interconnecting thesecomponents. The computer 800 may optionally include a user interface 810comprising a display device 812 (e.g., for displaying system statusinformation) and/or a keyboard 814 (e.g., for entering commands). Memory806 may include high speed random access memory and may also includenon-volatile memory, such as one or more magnetic or optical storagedisks. Memory 806 may include mass storage that is remotely located fromCPU's 802. The memory 806 may store:

-   -   an operating system 816 that include procedures for handling        various basic system services and for performing hardware        dependent tasks;    -   a network communication module (or instructions) 818 that is        used for connecting the computer 800 to other computers via the        one or more communications network interfaces 804 (wired or        wireless), such as the Internet, other wide area networks, local        area networks, metropolitan area networks, and so on;    -   a computing module 820 for computing a derivative of a node        importance function as described above;    -   a comparison module 822 for comparing a computed quantity with a        threshold as described above;    -   an identification module 824 for identifying nodes which meet        certain predefined criteria as describes above;    -   an intermediate quantity module 826 for determining multiple        derivative values for a node as described above;    -   an averaging module 828 for averaging intermediate quantities as        described above;    -   an adjusting module 830 for adjusting an importance of a node as        described above;    -   a deleting module 832 for deleting a node from the directed        graph as described above; and    -   an ordering module 834 for ordering search results based on the        normalized derivative value as described above.

Modules 820 through 834 may together comprise an embodiment of theinflation detector 136 (FIG. 1). In some embodiments, these modules, ora subset thereof, are implemented as part of a page ranker (130, FIG. 1)or page importance ranking subsystem.

Although some of various drawings illustrate a number of logical stagesin a particular order, stages which are not order dependent may bereordered and other stages may be combined or broken out. While somereordering or other groupings are specifically mentioned, others will beobvious to those of ordinary skill in the art and so do not present anexhaustive list of alternatives. Moreover, it should be recognized thatthe stages could be implemented in hardware, firmware, software or anycombination thereof.

The foregoing description, for purpose of explanation, has beendescribed with reference to specific embodiments. However, theillustrative discussions above are not intended to be exhaustive or tolimit the invention to the precise forms disclosed. Many modificationsand variations are possible in view of the above teachings. Theembodiments were chosen and described in order to best explain theprinciples of the invention and its practical applications, to therebyenable others skilled in the art to best utilize the invention andvarious embodiments with various modifications as are suited to theparticular use contemplated.

1. A computer-implemented method for identifying nodes that are beneficiaries of node importance inflating links in a directed graph of linked nodes, wherein the directed graph of linked nodes corresponds to a linked database, and wherein the nodes correspond to documents within the linked database, the method comprising: at a computer system including one or more processors and memory storing one or more programs, the one or more processors executing the one or more programs to perform the operations of: computing, for each of at least a subset of the nodes in the directed graph, a respective quantity corresponding to a mathematical derivative of a node importance function; for each node in the subset, comparing the respective computed quantity with a threshold; identifying, as nodes that are beneficiaries of node importance inflating links, at least a portion of the subset for which the comparison produces a predefined result; and performing a remedial action on a plurality of the identified nodes.
 2. The method of claim 1, including removing the plurality of identified nodes from the directed graph.
 3. The method of claim 1, including normalizing the respective quantity in accordance with a respective rank for the node.
 4. The method of claim 1, wherein the computing computes the mathematical derivative of the node importance function with respect to a coupling factor.
 5. The method of claim 4, wherein the computing includes: computing at least two intermediate quantities of the mathematical derivative of the node importance function for each of the set of nodes, each of the intermediate quantities computed using a different respective value of the coupling factor; and averaging the intermediate quantities to produce the computed respective quantity.
 6. The method of claim 4, wherein the coupling factor represents how tightly coupled the linked nodes are in the directed graph.
 7. The method of claim 4, wherein the coupling factor is inversely related to a probability that a user will randomly traverse the directed graph.
 8. The method of claim 4, further including: generating an adjusted importance for at least one node of the portion.
 9. The method of claim 8, wherein the generating adjusts, for the at least one node, the importance by an amount proportional to the respective computed quantity.
 10. The method of claim 1, wherein the computing includes: calculating a matrix A(c) representing the directed graph, the matrix A(c) being an N×N matrix that is a function of a link coupling coefficient c, where N is a number of nodes in the directed graph; calculating a principal eigenvector of A(c), denoted x(c); calculating a mathematical derivative with respect to c of x(c), denoted x′(c); and for at least one node, calculating from x′(c) and a rank for the node, an inflation likelihood value S.
 11. The method of claim 10, further comprising comparing the inflation likelihood value S with a predetermined spam threshold value.
 12. A non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing one or more programs for execution by one or more processors of a computer system, the one or more programs comprising: instructions for computing, for each of at least a subset of nodes in a directed graph of linked nodes, a respective quantity corresponding to a mathematical derivative of a node importance function; instructions for comparing the respective computed quantity with a threshold for each node in the subset; and instructions for identifying, as nodes that are beneficiaries of node importance inflating links, at least a portion of the subset for which the comparison produces a predefined result; and instructions for performing a remedial action on a plurality of the identified nodes; wherein the directed graph of linked nodes corresponds to a linked database, and wherein the nodes correspond to documents within the linked database.
 13. The computer readable storage medium of claim 12, including instructions for normalizing the respective quantity in accordance with a respective rank for the node.
 14. The computer readable storage medium of claim 12, wherein the instructions for computing include instructions for computing the mathematical derivative of the node importance function with respect to a coupling factor.
 15. The computer readable storage medium of claim 14, wherein the instructions for computing include: instructions for computing at least two intermediate quantities of the mathematical derivative of the node importance function for each of the set of nodes, each of the intermediate quantities computed using a different respective value of the coupling factor; and instructions for averaging the intermediate quantities to produce the computed respective quantity.
 16. The computer readable storage medium of claim 14, wherein the coupling factor represents how tightly coupled the linked nodes are in the directed graph.
 17. The computer readable storage medium of claim 12, including: instructions for generating an adjusted importance for at least one node of the portion.
 18. The computer readable storage medium of claim 17, wherein the instructions for generating include instructions for adjusting, for the at least one node, the importance by an amount proportional to the respective computed quantity.
 19. A system for identifying nodes that are beneficiaries of node importance inflating links in a directed graph of linked nodes, the system comprising: memory; one or more processors; one or more programs stored in the memory and configured for execution by the one or more processors, the one or more programs including: instructions to compute, for each of at least a subset of the nodes in the directed graph, a respective quantity corresponding to a mathematical derivative of a node importance function; instructions to compare, for each node in the subset, the respective computed quantity with a threshold; and instructions to identify, as nodes that are beneficiaries of node importance inflating links, at least a portion of the subset for which the comparison produces a predefined result; instructions to perform a remedial action on a plurality of the identified nodes; wherein the directed graph of linked nodes corresponds to a linked database, and wherein the nodes correspond to documents within the linked database.
 20. A computer-implemented method for performing search engine services using a directed graph of linked nodes, wherein the directed graph of linked nodes corresponds to a linked database, and wherein the nodes correspond to documents within the linked database, the method comprising: at a computer server system including one or more processors and memory storing one or more programs, the one or more processors executing the one or more programs to perform the operations of: computing, for each node of at least a portion of the nodes in the directed graph, a respective quantity for the respective node corresponding to a mathematical derivative of a node importance function; and in response to a search query received from a client system, ordering a subset of the nodes in the directed graph in accordance with the respective quantities, and returning to the client system a search result in accordance with the ordered subset of the nodes.
 21. The method of claim 20, wherein the computing computes the mathematical derivative of the node importance function with respect to a coupling factor.
 22. A non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing one or more programs for execution by one or more processors of a computer server system, the one or more programs comprising: instructions for computing, for each node of at least a portion of the nodes in a directed graph, a respective quantity for the respective node corresponding to a mathematical derivative of a node importance function; and instructions for responding to a search query received from a client system, including instructions for ordering a subset of the nodes in the directed graph in accordance with the respective quantities, and returning to the client system a search result in accordance with the ordered subset of the nodes; wherein the directed graph of linked nodes corresponds to a linked database, and wherein the nodes correspond to documents within the linked database.
 23. The computer readable storage medium of claim 22, wherein the instructions for computing include instructions for computing the mathematical derivative of the node importance function with respect to a coupling factor.
 24. A computer system for performing search engine services using a directed graph of linked nodes, wherein the directed graph of linked nodes corresponds to a linked database, and wherein the nodes correspond to documents within the linked database, the system comprising: memory; one or more processors; one or more programs stored in the memory and configured for execution by the one or more processors, the one or more programs including: instructions to compute, for each of at least a subset of the nodes in the directed graph, a respective quantity corresponding to a mathematical derivative of a node importance function; and instructions for responding to a search query received from a client system, including instructions for ordering a subset of the nodes in the directed graph in accordance with the respective quantities, and returning to the client system a search result in accordance with the ordered subset of the nodes.
 25. The system of claim 24, including instructions to compute the mathematical derivative of the node importance function with respect to a coupling factor. 